When a rural community loses its hospital, health care becomes harder to come by in an instant. But a hospital closure also shocks a small town's economy. It shuts down one of its largest employers. It scares off heavy industry that needs an emergency room nearby. And in one Tennessee town, a lost hospital means lost hope of attracting more retirees.
Philip Esformes, an obsessive businessman who built an empire of healthcare facilities in Miami-Dade, was found guilty Friday of at least 20 charges, including bribery and paying kickbacks, in a scheme to generate streams of patients for both his businesses.
Mary Hurley, a mother who is pregnant with her fourth child, does 99% of her shopping online. One of the few things she doesn’t shop for via her computer or phone is health care. Until now.
Walmart Inc. and other employers want more say over which doctors care for their workers, and they are ramping up efforts to pick and choose physicians included in health plans as they seek to reduce health spending.
One of the largest managers of prescription-drug benefits will offer clients the option of limiting how much diabetics owe out-of-pocket each month for their insulin, the latest step by a health-care company under pressure to curb drug costs. Express Scripts, a pharmacy-benefit manager owned by health insurer Cigna Corp. , said Wednesday it will immediately begin offering employers, labor unions and other clients the option to cap at $25 a month the copayments and other out-of-pocket costs that diabetics must pay to fill their insulin prescriptions.
Broken down by gender, the estimate is $150,000 for women and $135,000 for men, according to Fidelity Investments’ annual analysis. The amounts exclude things not covered by Medicare — dental, basic vision, over-the-counter medicines, long-term care. The nation’s health expenditure growth is anticipated to average 5.5 percent annually from 2017 through 2026, compared with 4.6 percent through 2028 for Medicare’s per-capita spending.